Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

This is the follow-up game to Leopard Lord, which I played recently; you can find the historical introduction there (specifically how Kayde took a piece of software in a magazine not written by themselves and tried to sell it). Leopard Lord felt like an askew D&D level with combat determined by checking if the player is holding the right weapons/armors against a particular enemy. It was better than I expected.

Terror From the Deep takes a different tack.

Via Spectrum Computing. I don’t want to get more into Kayde Software yet. I should discuss sometime their support of the ultra-obscure Grundy NewBrain computer. Probably for their next game (Ace in the H.O.L.E.).

The year is 1864. A storm has hit our ship and we’ve gone overboard. We’ve managed to survive by clinging onto debris, and come across the SS Celestial mid-ocean.

Then you saw the sail…

Frantic paddling brought you nearer to the becalmed vessel. your shouts have brought no response from the ship and now you are drifting very close…

This is (so far, I haven’t finished yet) a “arrived at a boat where everyone is dead” type story. Hence, no fights like Leopard Lord; FIGHT isn’t even an understood verb (STAB is, which may or may not have anything to do with battle).

I’m reminded a bit of Death Dreadnaught except that the rooms don’t have any descriptions, so the game has a tougher time building up the same sort of atmosphere of dread.

Based on my testing verbs, the list is simply:

CLIMB, READ, OPEN, FILL, LIGHT, FEED, PRESS, MAKE, SEARCH, EXAMINE, STAB, UNLIGHT, LAUNCH

which isn’t a lot to work with, and resembles Leopard Lord in length (but not in composition; no GIVE command, for instance). The one similarity is that EXAMINE and SEARCH are treated differently and both need to be done on everything you find. For example, early on there’s a BODY where EXAMINE reveals a message in blood…

The FISH can be taken, the body can’t.

…but later there’s another BODY with a key, which requires SEARCH to be used.

Here’s the first part of the map, before going down belowdecks:

There’s no obstacles in the way: it’s just a matter of wandering around decks and finding a bloody footprint and bodies. Curiously, not all the bodies are human.

I assume I’m supposed to visualize the Zorgian as a smaller version of what’s on the tape cover.

I was originally quite baffled here (before I realized the game jettisoned at least early combat) and thought this would be a confrontation, but as far as I can tell this is a dead Zorgian, not a live one. You can LAUNCH LIFEBOAT without interference, although it still doesn’t end well yet:

YOU HAVE LOST YOUR OARS. YOU WILL WANDER AIMLESSLY UNTIL YOU DIE.

From the bloody footprint to the south there’s another lifeboat and a CAT. I admit I was unsure if the cat was alive (or at least, it was both alive and dead for me simultaneously); hence it took me a while before I came back to test FEED CAT whilst holding the fish from earlier.

Other than the cat scene, the attempted atmosphere, and the KEY I found earlier on a body, the only other thing above-deck was a RUBY RING.

The stern has what the game just describes as a SAILOR. I thought briefly (since it isn’t a BODY) the sailor might be alive, but I can’t interact in any way. I’ve never had a “horror” styled text game where it is unclear at first if the character you’re dealing with is dead.

Moving on to the downstairs…

…a quick turn to the south reveals a Coal Hold with a dead (?) Zorgian. I am unable to get any coal. I’ve hacked at this room for a while for reasons you’ll see in a moment.

Further on is a LANTERN and a KNIFE (hence the stabbing in the previous screen), and even further is a stair down and yet another body.

Going down leads to darkness, and logically the lantern should be helpful, but it is described as empty. I tried to FILL LANTERN at the coal but this isn’t understood; I’m otherwise not sure how to get a light source.

That’s not quite the end of the line, though, so moving on, next is a mess room with a MAP.

The room after has a PARCHMENT with an ad for the next game in the series…

…with the final end of the passage being a huge cabin. The cabin has a LOCKER and a BOOK, the book explaining more about the bomb we’re supposed to make…

Do we need to blow up the ship to escape, or is this optional?

…and the locker has a box which itself has a REVOLVER. (I believe the key gets used here but I never tested exactly which moment.)

And with that, I’m stumped. I’ve got FLINT & STEEL, a REVOLVER, a LANTERN, and a RUBY RING and a KNIFE as “practical” items; the MAP, PARCHMENT, and BOOK all also count as items but likely just were there to dispense information. It’s strange to be stuck on something so small as the oil (or other fuel) for a light source; it “normal” playing circumstances I might be reaching for the hints right now, but I feel obligated to at least make a blog post first in case I discover something I’ve missed in the process. (Or get a helpful comment from the peanut gallery; please feel free to guess things I haven’t tried, but no hints from anyone who has looked up the solution yet, please.) I still keep wondering if one of the Zorgians is alive, just very passive; even the REVOLVER can’t be used to bring violence in any way I can find, though.